Chapter 1 of my “memoir”: My climate activism origin story
In the normal life of my teenager self, I stand out from everyone else because of my climate justice passion. But weirdly in the climate movement, I’m considered very normal and just another activist. I’m not super high profile like all the other amazing activists I know. I’m just another alarmed kid who is able to harness my hidden powers to give my generation a last chance at having a future. I hope my climate story can show how everyday people can be leaders.
My climate activist journey started in third grade when we briefly learned about climate change, and from that brief mention of what climate change is, the horror shattered my innocence into pieces of broken glass. My main motivation for my young self caring so much was about the innocent animals dying everyday that guilt trapped my existence. As a kid who grew up in a pretty perfect world, anything unfair, like the climate crisis handed down from older generations for us to clean up, was worth fighting against.
As I grew up, more of my innocence left me as I learned of even more environmental problems and the evil corruption behind it all. I read hundreds of books about ecological issues and watched tens of documentaries to get woke about our desecration of the planet and tried to do everything the books and documentaries suggested as much as possible. In 6th grade, I had the most amazingly inspiring teacher ever, who opened my mind to the horrible impacts of single use plastics. I immediately started to rethink how green I was and looking back at all my plastic sins. It made me realize that there are so many ways I need to be green besides just caring about climate change. It really shocked me how all these parts of our society that hurt our planet and ourselves are considered normal and not questioned.
I demanded my family change along with me, and eventually they did and started to understand how urgent these crises are. I drew an increasing amount of my attention to plastic pollution because it seemed like an easy problem with an easy solution, although later in my freshman year I learned that it’s not as easy as just banning everything. Whenever I got the chance, every one of my projects was made about the environment. Sixth and seventh grade was learning about everything in the environmental corner of the world, and eighth grade really catapulted my knowledge into advocacy. I started to learn more about other young people around the world building movements to stop climate change and really inspired me to be a part of the movement. Kids younger than me were speaking out and doing amazing things that are succeeding, so instead of thinking “Wow I could never do that,” I thought “If they can do it, I can do it.”
My woke moment was the 2016 election cycle and results. I grew up listening to the news on the radio and watching news on TV, because it always intrigued me to know what was going on in the world. Keeping up to date on the 2016 election woke me up to how politics worked, and my opinions on politics really changed. Seeing someone as radical as Donald Trump running alarmed me because his controversial views became so mainstream, which was really scary for me. Everyday, whenever I turned on the news, I found something new to be frustrated about. I thought he would never win, and his win surprised me and really shook my world. I previously hated politics and didn’t really care about it, — — it was irrelevant to me. I still hate politics but I started to actually care about politics like it affected my life, because it does. I was hoping for the best — that he wouldn’t be as bad as he was on the campaign trail, but it turned out even worse than I thought.
I never heard much about Trump’s conflict of interest and ties with big polluters, but then I knew that his administration was a disaster for my future and still is. The climate crisis immediately became one of my top priorities as it became more urgent with the threat of Trump’s presidency. I remember in seventh grade in one of our English units — facing injustice, where we had to watch a video of Severn Cullis-Suzuki, an environmental activist, at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 she was only twelve years old as she gave a famous and compelling speech about what the adults have done to this world and how hypocritical they were being. This was one of those things that really compelled me to care even more, and actually want to do something and be outspoken.
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Because I consumed so much climate media, especially through the internet, I became extremely angry about the climate crisis. I was mad that I was the only one who really cared about the climate crisis, and I just didn’t understand how people can just return to business as usual as if everything’s okay. Whenever I had these thoughts, I always thought that either I’m just really crazy and not good at convincing people about how serious this is, or people are just stupid. A combination of both really pushed me away from society as the dystopian mindset consumed me and made me want to disappear from the earth I love so much. I’d always try to nudge around my friends, but everyone just seemed so ignorant. I thought kids would care more, after all it’s our generation that is facing the most consequences.
In 2017 I got an Instagram, and I started posting about important stuff like the climate crisis. I just started small but I never knew that it would connect me to millions of activists all over the country and the world. People in my school started noticing how “passionate” I am about the planet. Being on the internet exposed me to so much information about the climate crisis and other environmental problems that I didn’t know about.
My only glimmer of hope was my parents. They seemed to get it, because they care about me, have expertise in science, and work in healthcare. It was always a crazy cycle because my endless rants and tantrums about the apocalypse never got me anywhere because I didn’t have a place to dump my anger into something meaningful. I didn’t know enough about the millions of people acting everyday and the revolutionary youth movements that needed me. I lost so many friends that year, and it really made me question my existence. I started losing my excellence in all my talents, and I really only felt that my purpose on this earth was to solve the climate crisis, and solve all the other world’s problems. 2017 just wasn’t a good year for me, so I hoped that 2018 would be my year.
I became more informative of the happenings of my little community, frequently reading village newsletters and county newspapers. I read this one local magazine in particular and it was basically a compilation of community members’ submissions reviewed by the editors. I started a petition to ban all single use plastics, and that petition got 3K signatures on change.org, which I started out of inspiration from reading dozens of books on how to change the world. I used that text to write a piece on the need to cut down on single use plastic use. I submitted it to the Clarksville Neighbors Magazine, contacted the editor, and it was published in the January 2018 issue, one of my breakthrough moments of progression.
Eighth grade wasn’t much better because of how I ended seventh grade, with no reliable friends. Eighth grade was 100x harder and it really hurt me because I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I spent most of my time being alone and isolated from society, mainly because of the climate depression I experienced. In between mountains of homework and stress I scoured the internet for more about what I could do to stop the climate crisis, and find connections to organizations. The student reaction to the Parkland shooting in 2018, and how those kids decided enough was enough and wanted to build a movement for change, compelled me to come back to society and be a productive leader for change.
I really did not expect to become an activist. It just happened because things in the world started to happen and I just reacted to them. I turned from a quiet shy little girl who didn’t speak until I was three to someone actively speaking up for my generation’s demands for climate justice. Activism looks different for everyone and I think that it can be for everyone, especially climate activism because the climate crisis affects us all. People feel like they have to be extremely knowledgeable, dedicated, passionate, and committing a ton of time to be an activist.
People get this weird stigma that activists are crazy radicals out in the street or people working full time getting no sleep dedicating themselves to a cause, and just seeing activists as exotic people. I want to bridge the gap between activists and regular people. There are a million meaningful ways to be part of a winning movement while still living a regular life. Because although youth activists are working endless hours on this important emergency, we are still teens who have to deal with peers, school, and life like everyone else. We know that it’s a hard and struggling balance but we take the time to make it work because of how important the climate crisis is to us.
This was originally written for a 2019 youth climate activist book project, with this article being an excerpt of a chapter I drafted about my climate activism
